Boston-based architects CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares designed this YMCA building with the goal to create a contemporary, but timeless, structure that will help reconnect the Hub neighborhoods divided for decades by the Central Artery.

Construction of a planned 125,000-square-foot YMCA will begin next year in Boston, transforming the first Central Artery surface development parcel into a 21st century structure and binding the North End and emerging Bulfinch Triangle neighborhoods along the new Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The YMCA project will be the first development to rise from the piles of steel, concrete and dirt littered across the heart of the city as the Big Dig winds to a close and the elevated Central Artery is removed. Boston-based architect CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares has designed a building that will sit above the Liberty Tunnel and encase the Interstate 93 exit ramps. David Hancock, principal of the firm, can see the future site of the YMCA from his office windows above Canal Street.

“Every morning I watch them taking another piece down, it’s really phenomenal,” he said of the last stages of the Big Dig. “Ten years from now, no one will believe that there’s a highway carrying thousands of cars underground.”

Today, it’s the quietness of the neighborhood that some can’t believe – absent of a major interstate highway for the first time in 50 years. As the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, city of Boston and the communities surrounding the Central Artery decide precisely how to knit the neighborhoods back into a cohesive pattern, CBT is charged with creating the first structure for the strip.

CBT had several factors to consider. For one, the building had to encompass the interstate ramps that snake up from the tunnel. It also had to fit snugly on top of the foundations built into the highway.

“There’s a tendency in architecture to make a floating object on sticks, and have the building uses up above,” Hancock said. “That’s not what we wanted to do here. We wanted a building design that grows out of the ground and is connected to the street.”

CBT created one main entrance that opens onto the south end of the building that faces the park. The lobby, an enclosed atrium, will feature a three-story climbing wall.

The architects had another aspect to consider – as a community center, the YMCA will be active from 5:30 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night.

“What we really love about it is that it’s so lively and so actively used,” Hancock said. “We want to celebrate that with lots of glass so that people in the park can see the people in the gym and in the pool. As it faces the park, it’s very open and glassy.”

The side that faces the North End, however, will feature a different context, one that blends in with the architecture of the neighborhood, the smaller windows and the tighter buildings of a previous century.

“We realize there are neighborhood connections – it’s not far from Government Center, the emerging Bulfinch Triangle neighborhood and the North End, but it’s a site and a building that we believe should have a strong self-statement, Hancock said.”

‘Inevitable’ Conclusion

The YMCA project isn’t the first air-rights parcel CBT has designed. It also worked on the Columbus Center project, which will eventually connect the Back Bay, South End and Bay Village neighborhoods in Boston. It’s also designing the Mandarin Hotel, which will be built over a parking garage on Boylston Street in the city.

“All of these buildings have something underneath that you have to live with,” Hancock said.

For the YMCA site, the foundation structures built into the tunnel are one example. In a sense, the location of those walls put some constraint on how CBT designed the building. There are many prominent lines in the building design that followed the lines of the foundation.

“We used it as a means of articulating the building mass,” Hancock said. “Whether or not that idea continues and survives, we don’t know.”

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority owns the ground that the YMCA will cover and the YMCA is now working out the technical details of the lease, which should take about three to four months, according to Hancock. The next step will include an environmental analysis and a series of public meetings.

“We don’t think that we’re the only ones with ideas of how a building should look,” he said.

Hancock said that CBT believes that building designs should be “of its time.” It’s a practice they used when designing Newbury Street’s Niketown building – the use and materials were contemporary but it borrowed from the past. It’s exactly what CBT wants to achieve with the YMCA building.

“We wanted it to have an inevitable quality, a sense that it’s always been there,” he said.

The Turnpike Authority chose the YMCA for the parcel over its competitor, the Boston Museum Project, in December. Fund-raising and construction of the $40 million to $50 million project will be completed in five years, according to YMCA Greater Boston President John Ferrell.

The YMCA’s local headquarters on Huntington Avenue, which features a cornerstone laid by former President Taft in 1912, is the association’s fifth location. The first YMCA branch in the nation opened in Boston in 1851.

“Our vision is that this new building will be a sign for the YMCA for this century,” Ferrell said.

The North End building, the YMCA’s sixth facility in the Hub, will include two pools, a gymnasium, teen and senior adult centers, a theater, community room, fitness center and childcare programming. The YMCA projects that it will have 12,000 active participants at the new site.

The YMCA has not yet chosen a name for the building, and instead refers to it as “Parcel 6.”

“We could have a major donor come forward, in which case that would change, but in the meantime we’re trying to be more creative,” Ferrell said.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority is now working on a design for Parcel 18 in Boston, which sits across from Rowe’s Wharf. The property consists of another ramp parcel, similar to the YMCA site. Initially designated for an arboretum, BRA Director Mark Maloney said that other uses will be discussed at future meetings. Development of the parcel into an arboretum would force the park onto a second floor, above the ramps, making public access more difficult.

The Turnpike Authority also is reviewing ideas for Parcel 24, off Kneeland Street in Boston, as a potential site for a housing development. It’s not yet clear whether that development would be entirely affordable or mixed-income, Maloney said.